Many of traffic accidents occur at intersections, and many accidents may be prevented by safety checks made by a driver. In techniques related to diagnosing the driver's driving safety, a method has been proposed to evaluate the appropriateness of a safety check operation from the driver's head turn angle at the intersection, based on a movement of the driver's head, a vehicle position, and a vehicle velocity, for example. Such a method is proposed in International Publication No. WO2009/148188, for example.
However, the proposed method described above detects the movement of the driver's head, and it is difficult to know a range that is actually being checked by the driver's eyes. In addition, if the evaluation judges that the safety check is made when the driver's head turn is detected in a predetermined angular range, the driver's actual line of sight may not be facing an appropriate direction. Moreover, the angular range to be checked by the driver differs for each intersection. For these reasons, it is difficult to accurately evaluate the driver's safety check operation.
Further, because the proposed method described above detects the vehicle velocity for use in evaluating the appropriateness of the safety check operation, it is difficult to know whether the driver is at a position having an unobstructed view of the intersection. In other words, the view from the driver within the vehicle may be obstructed by a wall, a building, or the like, for example, and it is impossible to judge from simply the vehicle velocity whether the driver is at a position where the safety check can be made. For this reason, it is difficult to accurately evaluate the driver's safety check operation.
Accordingly, it is difficult to accurately evaluate the appropriateness of the driver's visual confirmation operation.
The applicants are aware of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publications No. 2007-310794, No. 2008-181206, and No. 2009-123182, for example.